Trayvon Martin

Here’s a quick take in the less than 10 minutes I have before I crash and go to sleep.

Vigilantism in Florida…. I went to Florida in January, Miami to be exact, and was impressed only by the pristine beaches and fantastic weather. The culture is not amenable to myself. I saw way too many Maseratis, poseurs, jokesters, and so on. I saw an “Irish bar” with pink neon lights. I saw people reclining in yachts in whatever fucking river they have, the Bay of Biscayne, and so on. Islands in the bay… excellent crab… very private looking residential developments. Pretty much everything.

Actually come to think of it, I fucking jogged around in a couple of posh communities. Communities on islands. Communities with old fuckers who probably I-Banked in the 1970s or started businesses in medical contracting or automobile parts manufacturing. Who knows, right?

And now this kid gets shot, and nobody with half a fucking brain who understands that this Zimmerman character lied to the cops… I mean, his story is fairly inconsistent with even a rudimentary description of what happened. But this guy, he’s 28 years old, driving around Orlando in an SUV. And from the pictures of him, he doesn’t look like one of those rich patrician individuals at all. And the question for me, what kind of a gated community is this? Is this a gated community for the working class? Because only Florida would have that kind of shit (well, maybe not ONLY Florida, but you see my point).

So on a scale from 0 to extremely fucking concerned about pursuing truth and justice, where do you rank the suburban cops in Orlando when a black kid gets shot in the chest on a sidewalk in broad daylight?

Now just a couple of other points. I don’t know if it’s my place to say this necessarily, seeing as how I’m not part of the community, but what the hell is up with the “stop snitching” movement? Here in Chicago, I hear stories on a regular basis, every few weeks perhaps, about some little girl or old guy getting hit by a stray bullet as part of some ruckus. And are these crimes ever solved? The list of Chicago cold cases is longer than (insert clever comparison here —> very late).

Nobody helps the cops with anything in Chicago, from what I understand. Either they don’t give a shit because they did it or are friends with the person who did it, or hate the person who did it and have plans to kill said culprit themselves. Or… they are an innocent individual, attempting to move forward with a normal life, and they can’t be bothered to get caught up in pursing abstract ideals within the suffocating atmosphere of intimidation.

So is it correct to say that way more people are caught up in this shit than Trayvon Martin? Every day kids… black kids… they get shot all over the country, most of them by other black kids. Sometimes the murders get solved but very often they don’t. And of course there are the police sweeps and frivolous arrests, shakedowns, and so on. But the point is that things are a clusterfuck out there. That’s what I don’t know if it’s my place to say, because contrary to the admonitions of “we’re all human beings” and “we’re all Americans”, they’re black and I’m white, and I don’t usually care to concern myself with situations that I don’t belong in.

But in any case, this certainly does not elevate my impression of Florida. Good luck to the family in finding witnesses who will step forward, in the same way that any family of a black murder victim needs a lot of luck to get answers.

And that’s what I really worry is not my place to comment on — the inability of the black community to ever produce witnesses to black-on-black shootings.